For three decades, Margaret Holloway lived in a place where her truth was labeled illness. At seventy-two, she would sit beside the narrow barred window at Riverside State Psychiatric Hospital, watching autumn leaves fall like whispered secrets. Inside those walls, the story about her had already been written: she was confused, unreliable, detached from reality. The house she insisted was hers existed only, they said, in the ruins of her imagination.
But Margaret knew the difference between delusion and deception.
Hidden for thirty years was a folded document bearing her full name—Margaret Anne Holloway—typed neatly across the top. The deed. Proof. While others claimed her mind was clouded, she understood something far sharper: the fog surrounding her life had been carefully engineered.
One mist-heavy morning, before the nurses completed their rounds, Margaret did what no one expected. She walked away.